Well, what the title means is that I couldn’t think of any snappy name for this post, which is just to pass on two bits of information.

Lilandra and Chennette are making the Hajj this year. Insha Allah (God Willing). We’re going with our parents, and will therefore be traveling to Saudi Arabia and thereabouts for the entire month of December. To commemorate this, we (Lilandra) have started a blog, called Lilandra and Chennette Make Hajj. We’re creative that way. We couldn’t get hajj at wordpress.com, but we got thehajj – we’re it. THE Hajj. Go visit. so far Lilandra’s retroactively documented our (her) steps since our first official Hajj group meeting (for which I was fortunate enough to be in Trinidad). Maybe this will be a way to help me prepare even though I am away from the rest of the group.

And, if you’re part of the foodblogging community, you may have heard of a grand fundraiser for Briana Brownlow of Figs with Bri. Jugalbandi is hosting this special event for CLICK this month, Click for Bri: Yellow who is fighting a battle with breast cancer. In addition to the special prize for Bri’s pick of the Click photo submissions, there is a fundraiser with lots of great prizes being raffled off for donors. Do you want specialty international food items? Autographed cookbooks? Accommodation in Italy? It’s all there. Show support by participating in Click this month, and if you can, by giving a donation which goes directly to Briana’s account to help with her treatment costs. I have to admit that I didn’t know of Bri before this, but I am a great admirer of Bee and Jai over at Jugalbandi, especially since they launched and manage Click. So, this is my bit to spread the word.

You may have noticed that, as of late, I have been posting maybe twice per month if so much. So much for my plans loudly declared at the beginning of the year. And I am fast approaching my 2nd anniversary at Lifespan of a Chennette…but it’s work. That day job thingy that gives me very little time these days to think, write, think about cooking or taking photos. Sigh. Even Google Reader was conspiring against me this week and not loading so I could keep track of the blogosphere. But, c’est la vie.

See you soon, most likely at the deadline for Click, as per usual.

I greatly appreciate the comments and votes here and on my Flickr, but since I have only a few hours, and Bee herself is rushing me here it is! My closeup of cooked brown lentils in a bowl. I used a wooden chopping board as my base, and a knife block as the background. Loaded the lentils into a bowl from our Asian set, and ran into the back to snag a few leaves of bandhania. Used my favourite kitchen window light et voila!

As always I am running late (I have one more day!), but fortunately during my long weekend home, Mom made lentils. Cooked with onions, garlic, chives (sive), bandhania and probably a bit of browning and whatnot.

Yummy eaten with rice and stewed chicken. I ate it in the airport waiting for my flight back to Guyana.

I garnished with some leaves of bandhania/chadon beni fresh from the garden for green and because it’s my favourite herb.

If anyone has any preference, I would love to hear it! I’ll edit the post when I(we) have decided. And thanks to anyone who feels like participating in yet another of my rushed blog-event submissions

Today.

The theme for the month of April (which ends today, I know) is Au Naturel! And, my entry…the lovely POMMERAC, ready-to-eat, unprocessed and untreated. Delicious. And pretty, with the redness and the whiteness next to each other. And the furry centre.

Pommerac is the French patois name in T&T. Also called Jamoon in Trinidad. Known as Malay Apples. These are much more fibrous in texture than an apple, not crunchy, but with high water content. Different taste, however, that I haven’t figured out how to describe! Latin name: Syzygium malaccense.

In Jamaica they call it an otaheite apple (ignore what other people call the otaheite apple). From a comment on my Flickr I was advised that they call it Ponmdo in creole Martinique, Pomme d’eau in French. In Guadeloupe it’s called Pomme Malaka. As it’s not really sweet they say also “acre” and in creole that word is “rak“. That becomes Ponmrak or Pommerac if you turn it Frenchy (according to jendayee).

UPDATE (6 May 2008): From a comment left by Trinikreyol on my Flickr:

Ok i am a trini and i speak creole also known as patois, i can give you an explanation of the word pommerac. In trinidad unlike martinique and guadeloupe our creole has been strongly influenced by spanish. The word pommerac comes from a combination of the words pomme which is french for apple and the spanish word maracas which is what some trinis call shack-shack. The fruit does look like the instrument as well as an apple! Hence the name!

Some other shots.

Home chocolate, or cocoa tea, isn’t the most beautiful looking of drinks, so maybe it wasn’t the wisest choice for a photo event. Particularly with my lack of experience on staging food, and perfectly lit places in my apartment. The natural oils in the cocoa can seep upwards, and the top of the drink gets a dark sometimes gritty sheen. If you boil it with the milk, you also can get a little cracking in that darkness. Not the creamy richness, or milky goodness of other hot chocolate drinks, topped with marshmallows or whipped cream (both of which, for the record, I don’t really like), but it’s good. And it’s home for me. I don’t know why certain chain cafes in Trinidad sell “Mexican Spiced” hot chocolate, when we have our very own spicy chocolate mixture. Sigh. Regard this as my bid to start commercial availability chocolate-tea, Trini-style, at all those trendy habitual hot-drink establishments.

Trinidad cocoa has a history behind it. We developed a pest resistant strain of fine cocoa, that survived ravages to the cocoa industry decades ago. The Wikipedia entry for cacao: “Trinitario, a hybrid of Criollo and Forastero, is used in about 10% of chocolate.”. But that’s not all that makes it famous; cacao trinitario is a gourmet item. We know our cocoa here…or we should. The truth is, the elite cocoa is sold almost directly from the Gran Couva estate to European chocolate purveyors. Valhrona created history, for example, in creating vintage chocolate by single domains. And Trini cocoa was used in one of the lines:

By creating Gran Couva, Valrhona was the first in the world of chocolate to produce the first vintage domain chocolate. Its taste is unique as it comes from a single domain.

In Trinidad in the Caribbean, on the domain of Gran Couva, some of the best cacao varieties are grown – the Trinitarios. We have selected the most promising cocoa beans from among the best batches of this Domain for their delightful aroma.

There is only a limited quantity of each vintage.

But what I had this morning was just good old home chocolate. I don’t know the vintage, or the precise estate and perhaps my nostalgia is the dominant element of my enjoyment. That’s not a problem. I present to you options for my entry into Click for January 2008.

I have until January 30 to submit my entry, and I don’t know which one to submit. If anyone has any ideas (other than re-shoot, since this is the 2nd attempt) I’d appreciate them! Right now, I’m leaning towards the first or last photo. I am not expecting to win any prizes (the current entries include some simply fantastic shots) but it’s hard for me to decide when I can only see the flaws.

I have now decided. After looking at them intermittently all day, I think the last shot should go to Bee and Jai for CLICK! I need to move away from my preference for closeups in food shots.

I had a plan for this NOODLE edition of Click! (the monthy themed food-photography event hosted by Bee and Jai of Jugalbandi), which involved sawine, Trini-style, as depicted here.
Of course, I wasn’t planning to use THAT photo which is why I had a plan to take some more artistic photograph of sawine, or vermicelli noodles or something. But here we are.

Or rather, here I am, in Turkey, without any sawine, or vermicelli noodles to photograph. But I want to participate in Click as much as I can, so given the leeway the organisers have given in the early stages, I am going to repost an older photo, just this once. I wish it was at least a photo using my D80, but I did like my CoolPix 7900′s food shots.

It is still sawine, or as we Trinis call it, sawine CAKE, as our sawine is noodles in sweetened, spiced milk. Sawine made like this, is more common in Guyana, and they just call it vermicelli, cooking the noodles with sugar and spices (and in some cases egg) and setting it to firm up in a pan, before cutting into squares. I don’t always like this version, as I have some texture issues, but this one I had on Eid ul Adha last year, was actually pretty good. It also had some maraschino cherries mixed in (hence the pink spots).

Visit the current entries for this month. The deadline is November 20 (and since I return home midnight on the 20th, you see why I resorted to a previous picture). Good Luck all!

I apologise if the links aren’t proper – I am blogging via Flickr as even the proxies aren’t perfect from this connection.

CLICK is a new food photography event, started by Bee & Jai of Jugalbandi. It’s theme based, inviting entries every month based on a culinary ingredient or concept. October 2007 is the first month and I am just about making the deadline of October 20! As part of my goal of focusing a bit more on the blog for this, my 2nd year of blogging, I decided I would try to enter such blogosphere events. Even though I am only starting, it’s an incredible way to discover truly phenomenal food blogs, writers and photographers. So, I venture out deeper into the blogosea (some part of my mind thinks the blog words are bit overdone, but…) with an entry into CLICK for October 2007.

The first theme is a culinary staple – EGGS. Although around the first week of October, I had thoughts of quiche, or a baked custard. Or anything really creative with eggs…this was not to be. I find myself on the afternoon of October 20 making a fried egg sandwich. And thinking back to my varied history with such a meal. As a child I hated the white of the egg. The only point of eating eggs at all was to get to the yolk. And in a fried egg (sunnyside) this was THE best. Yellow, runny and better than butter on toast. Yum. I had multi-grain dinner rolls and thought, “I can make a sandwich with JUST the yolk; it would fit perfectly on this toasted dinner roll.” And so it did. Isn’t it yummy?

The picture isn’t necessarily the greatest. But I am working with a deadline here and I don’t have it in me to keep trying today. Lesson to self: START EARLIER. As in days earlier. (And no, I did not waste the white of the egg – I eat them now. I am after all grown up. Egg whites that are crispy and brown are great -with the yolk of course).

I wish Bee and Jai all the best with this food event, which is going to challenge my photography skills, not to mention my procrastination. And good luck to the judges! Take a look at all the entries.

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UPDATE: October 26 2007 – Winners posted! Congrats to Sunita’s World, Inner Lens, Spittoon Extra, and Tasty Palettes. I am beyond pleased that my entry at least ranked in the top 10 of 67 in the Delish (Droolworthiness) category Waiting anxiously for the next challenge…